Hunters have for decades used strings of floating decoys to lure waterfowl within shooting range, or dropped marker buoys at their favorite fishing spots with hopes of later returning to find the same successful fishing. Hunters and fishermen have also discovered that the intrinsic advantages of pursuing their quarry in the early morning or late evening hours have led them to embark well before the light of dawn and return to shore after nightfall. They are, therefore, mindful of the problems and inconveniences associated with attempting to quickly sort, deploy, retrieve, and stow their equipment without fuss or tangling while hampered by poor visibility.
One object of this invention is to fashion a detachable anchoring mechanism for duck decoys which may be quickly and easily attached and detached, thereby avoiding many of the complications attendant existing anchored decoy designs.
A further object of this invention is to construct an anchoring mechanism which will self-right overturned decoys and automatically play out only enough anchoring line to firmly anchor the decoy, but not allow excess line to be fed out permitting the decoy to drift off.
Another object of this invention is to permit that anchoring system to operate in a manner which will firmly anchor the decoy but not impede or detract from its realistic and natural appearance as it floats on the water, rising and falling due to wave action.
An additional object of this invention is to devise an anchoring mechanism that may be used interchangably with decoys, marker buoys, or any other floating articles.
A final object of this invention is to design a decoy with the stated advantages which requires a minimum of moving parts or mechanical components, and which will be easy and economical to manufacture.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,917,857 and 3,059,368 disclose decoys capable of quacking or simulating the swimming and feeding mannerisms of a duck or similar waterfowl. Each decoy accomplishes its objective by using mechanical devices employing weight, gears, and human or wave power. The decoy of U.S. Pat. No. 2,917,857 also incorporates an anchoring weight and a reel for the anchor line located inside the decoy.
Other line-and-reel anchoring systems have been disclosed in various U.S. patents, including those of U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,789,649 and 1,951,429. The common characteristic of these structures is their placement of an anchoring line reel within a cavity inside the decoy. U.S. Pat. No. 1,789,649 employs a detent and gear to prevent the reel from rotating and playing out line after it has been set, and uses an enlarged nib and spring clip to hold the anchor. U.S. Pat. No. 1,951,429 places an additional cavity within the tail of the decoy to house the anchor when not in use, and uses a friction disk held in place by a locking screw to prevent the reel from rotating.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,951,424 uses gravity to hold a floating plate equipped with a detent against the reel body to prevent line slippage, and a set of spring-loaded jaws to hold the anchor when not in use. The mechanism is retained in a thin box laid horizontally against the bottom of the decoy.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,340,192 discloses a reel hung inside the body of a decoy, with a ratchet-like locking system of notches to engage a locking pin, which also serves as the release lever and line guide.
While each of these inventions has added some new element to the prior art, there remain shortcomings which these designs do not overcome and which are even exacerbated by the known devices.
Hunters commonly arrive at a deployment site with decoy anchoring lines poorly wound or snarled and tangled because most decoys have poor anchor line storage arrangements. It is often necessary while deploying a string of decoys for hunters to first throw the decoys from their boat to clear tangled decoy lines. This often results in some overturned decoys, and the hunter must row back along the string to right the capsized decoys. If each decoy is to be anchored individually so as to keep them in a particular pattern, it is even more difficult to deploy a series of anchored decoys by throwing them without further entangling the various adjacent lines. Individual anchoring systems generally require the hunter to stop at each location and set the proper anchor line length. If the decoy were instead tossed out of the boat, the anchoring reels inside the presently known decoys would make them top-heavy and likely to capsize, and the locking mechanism would likely release and allow the decoy to drift.
Hunters returning to shore late at night will often bundle their personal belongings together to take indoors with them, but leave items such as decoys, camouflage and oars in the boat for the next morning. It is also common during the late autumn hunting season for overnight temperatures to drop well below freezing, and hunters arrive at their boats in the morning to find the anchoring lines and mechanisms on their decoys frozen solid. The hunters must then carry the entire string of decoys indoors to thaw.
Another shortcoming is that once the presently known decoys are in place, they are tethered to their anchor by a fixed length of line. While a living duck would swim along the water's surface, briefly rising and falling with the waves, a decoy, due to the weight of the anchor and the fixed length of anchor line, will bob unnaturally below the surface of the water as waves pass, thus betraying itself.
If the anchor should become tangled on the lakebed to the point where it cannot be forceably pulled loose, the hunter must reach underwater to find the decoy and its reel mechanism and release it. This presents both a major inconvenience and a potential danger in cold weather or an unstable boat.
In many of the designs, the reel mechanism cannot be detached from the decoy to allow reeling in of the anchor line, cleaning the line, or separately storing the decoy. If a snarl develops in the line, the hunter must fumble with both the decoy and the reel mechanism to retrieve the anchor line. The addition of detents, notches, springs, and grooves in the prior art structures only increases the number of problems that can befall the anchoring mechanism or cause tangling of the line.
The unique anchoring mechanism of this invention disposes of these problems and inconveniences. Furthermore, it employs less moving components and complex mechanical devices, may be manufactured and assembled more easily and economically, and may be used with a variety of floating articles such as marker buoys and the like.